MO House Ends First Regular Session of the 98Th General Assembly

MO House Ends First Regular Session of the 98th General Assembly

Intro:Members of the Missouri House of Representatives wrapped up the end of the first regular session of the 98th General Assembly with a flurry of activity. Jonathan Lorenz takes a look at the sights and sounds of the final day of the two thousand fifteen legislative session.

Type:PKG

TRT:2:11

Locator:Missouri House of Representatives

Jefferson City

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Lawmakers started the final day of the two thousand fifteen legislative session with a busy agenda.

Following the resignation of Speaker John Diehl, lawmakers unanimously elected Todd Richardson to serve as the new speaker of the Missouri House.

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Throughout the two thousand fifteen legislative session, lawmakers truly agreed and finally passed more than one hundred thirty pieces of legislation.

Super:Speaker Todd Richardson

(R) Poplar Bluff

“Obviously over the past weeks and months this has been a rather difficult session at times for a variety of reasons but as we’ve had a chance to take stock of it we are excited about what we were able to accomplish this session.”

Members of the majority point towards the passage of welfare reform, unemployment reform and several other pieces of legislation as signs of a successful session.

However not everyone views two thousand fifteen as a success, the House’s top democrat sees the events of the past session differently.

Super:Rep. Jacob Hummel

(D) St. Louis

“We’ve hurt working families with right to work, we’ve cut unemployment benefits to the lowest in any state in the nation, we’ve failed again to expand Medicaid, we’ve left billions of dollars on the table and we’ve still yet again failed to pass any type of ethics reform.”

Following the events this past summer in Ferguson, Missouri many called for legislation to address the issues surrounding the death of Michael Brown.

Super:Rep. Clem Smith

(D) Velda Village Hills

“We don’t have one piece of legislation that anyone here in this body can go home and say hey we did this for Ferguson or we did this to change the image of Missouri.”

“Look I think any time you can have a session where two pieces of legislation as significant as House Bill Forty-Two and Senate Bill Five which both were spurred out of concerns surrounding the events in Ferguson.

Those are two signature accomplishments of the session and for anybody to say that we didn’t address those issues or didn’t look at them I flatly disagree with that characterization.”

Looking forward, lawmakers will return to the State Capitol on September sixteenth to deal with any pieces of legislation vetoed by the Governor… reporting from the State Capitol, I’m Jonathan Lorenz.